The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touchpads and touch-screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include adjusting the position and/or size of one or more user interface objects. Exemplary user interface objects include control elements such as buttons, sliders, and other graphics; digital images; video; text; and icons. A user will, in some circumstances, need to perform such manipulations on user interface objects in a digital content (e.g., videos and music) management application (e.g., iTunes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an image management application (e.g., Aperture, iPhoto, Photos from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a document reader application (e.g., iBooks from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a communications management application (e.g., a messaging, e-mail, or telephone application).
But existing methods for performing these manipulations are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, using a sequence of mouse based inputs to select one or more user interface objects and perform one or more actions on the selected user interface objects is tedious and creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, these methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.